In modern-day society, individuals have the freedom to choose the physician by whom they wish to be treated for a given medical condition. Since an individual may require the attention of more than one specialized medical professional, it may thus happen that the patient is seen by two or more physicians for the same or different medical conditions. Each physician may prescribe one or more drugs, with goals as diverse as treating a condition, mitigating a symptom, relieving pain, etc. If a patient is prescribed multiple drugs, there is a risk that some of the drugs may adversely interact with one another. Such drugs are said to be contraindicated. Moreover, if the patient is being seen for multiple medical conditions, then the drug prescribed for one condition may cause an adverse side effect due to another condition with which the patient is afflicted.
Of course, a physician will usually try to take the risk of side effects into consideration when prescribing a drug. Still, there is a possibility for human error when performing a contraindications verification, for example. A compounding factor is the sheer amount of medical knowledge that a physician has to think about when delivering medical care. Moreover, physicians will generally be unaware of what drugs the patient may have been prescribed by other physicians or for what other ailment the patient may have sought treatment from another physician. Asking the patient for this information may be considered as one solution but can lead to incomplete or incorrect information which may lead to the issuance of an inappropriate prescription. Clearly, therefore, the risk of an adverse medication side effect is greatly increased when a patient is seen by multiple physicians and is prescribed multiple drugs, a scenario not at all uncommon. It would thus be desirable to manage information regarding prescribed drugs in order to assist a physician in treating a patient and improve appropriate prescribing.
Furthermore, a physician's ability to gauge the effectiveness of a drug is often conditional upon the patient's regular intake of a prescribed dosage, followed by a check-up. If the patient has neglected to refill a prescription in the meantime, or has been using more than the originally prescribed dosage of the drug by obtaining a supplemental prescription from another physician/pharmacy, this may skew the physician's assessment of the effectiveness of a drug, leading to, potentially, an erroneous diagnosis and the issuance of further prescriptions that may not be appropriate for the situation at hand. It would thus be desirable to provide a way to monitor prescription drug use in order to assist physicians to more accurately assess the effectiveness of therapy and to avoid unintentional over-prescribing.